Anthropologist Joe Zias spent two years bringing to light a mysterious inscription on Absalom's Tomb that led to a sensational revelation for the Christian world
When you stand on the round observation point called the Absalom's Tomb observatory, and look down at the arid Kidron Valley, you can see several ancient tombs carved into the mountain: Absalom's tomb, the Tomb of the Sons of Hezir and Zacharia's Tomb. Absalom's Tomb is the only monument that remains whole, and is the most magnificent of them all: a pitcher-shaped structure, about 20 meters high, hewn from the rock. Anthropologist Joe Zias spent most of his free time over the past two years next to this structure.
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For days on end, Zias sprawled alongside the grave. Sometimes, in the evenings, he came accompanied by security guards, because in this neighborhood one tends to encounter drug dealers and their customers, both Jews and Palestinians. During the daylight hours, Zias sat in the shade of a tree near the site, reading a book,with a camera ready at his side. Every hour he examined the angle of the sun, checking to see if the inscription he was looking for would be illuminated and appear on the corner of the structure.
"I had the time, and after all, it's a matter of patience," he says. "For about two years I sat there regularly. For entire days. Sometimes I would go two or three times a week only to see if the situation had improved. I could have sat there for months on end. I read a book and every hour I took a picture, until one day, actually at the end of the day, at dusk, the letters emerged."
Absalom's Tomb is a site sacred to the Jews, who believe that Absalom, the rebellious son of King David, is buried there. It was built about 2,000 years ago, but the first mention of its connection with Absalom is in a Karaite book from the 10th century C.E. that was found in the Cairo Geniza. Zias was the one who discovered that earlier, for hundreds of years, the tomb was a holy site for Christians - at least according to the inscription he found, dated to the fourth century C.E., indicating that this is the grave of Zacharia the priest, father of John the Baptist - who, the New Testament says, baptized Jesus in the Jordan River.
The discovery of an inscription is an exciting achievement for any archaeologist, whether professional or amateur, but this discovery is special for Zias. "Until now, I had to return all my anthropological research to the earth and to the Haredim [ultra-Orthodox Jews]," he says. "Finally there's something that they can't take away from us, and this is something that has been here for about 1,600 years." Zias, 61, worked for many years identifying skeletons for the Israel Antiquities Authority. "In 1997, there were drastic cutbacks, as well as quite a few problems with the Haredim," he says. "The anthropologists were the first to go home. After 25 years of research I got a phone call from Amir Drori, who was the director general of the authority at the time. He informed me that we had to return the bones within a day or two, and all our research went down the drain."
A pensioner's patience
For about 20 years Zias has been living in an old apartment in the city center. Close to the Miss Sigal boutique on busy Jaffa Road, not far from the Sbarro restaurant, there is a lovely alley that looks as though it belongs in an old European city. A heavy green iron gate opens onto a small paved yard shaded by a large tree, and leads visitors to Zias' unique apartment. He is a native of the United States, divorced with two grown children. He lives in the apartment with his partner, who is also an anthropologist by training; she is about half his age, but "we won't discuss that," he requests. Zias is a tall and impressive-looking man, an athlete who runs about 10 kilometers a day. About a year ago he made a seven-week bicycle trip across the United States from coast to coast, by himself.
"As absurd as it sounds, the whole story began here in the apartment," he says. "I was sitting on the sofa with a student of art history who had written a thesis about Absalom's Tomb. She showed me a few black-and-white photos and asked me about the meaning of the circle that appears on the monument and can be seen in the photo. Although it isn't my field - because after all, I work with bones, and what interests me is someone who died of some disease thousands of years ago - I looked at the circle and told her that I actually could recognize the shapes of Greek letters. In other words, [there was] a kind of inscription next to the circle she was pointing to."
These photos had been taken by Zev Radovan, the leading photographer of archaeology in Israel. "I went to visit him, and it turned out that he didn't remember when he had taken the pictures, maybe 20 years ago, nor had he written the date on the negative. I told him that I recognized letters as part of a Greek inscription and he laughed and said: `Forget it.'"
As early as 1954, archaeologist Nahman Avigad of Hebrew University published his book, "Ancient Monuments in the Kidron Valley" (Bialik Institute, in Hebrew); he is considered the supreme authority on the history and shape of these monuments. Zias: "Radovan told me that if Avigad didn't write about an inscription, then it doesn't exist, because Avigad - and he said this in English - `didn't miss a heartbeat.' I knew Radovan was right, because the pedantic Avigad really didn't miss a thing, but I showed him the photo again, and he had to admit that I might be right. According to the angle of the sun he saw that the photo had been taken in the summer, toward dusk."
That conversation took place in the winter, about three years ago. Radovan and Zias got into the car and drove to Absalom's Tomb. "We went up to the site and ... gornisht [nothing]," says Zias. "We didn't see a thing.
"I felt ridiculous, but Radovan explained to me how important the light is, that in the world of archaeology what you see at 9 A.M. you won't see at midday, because of the angle of the shadow. He told me that I had to come at the beginning of the summer at dusk, when the sun sits on the walls of Jerusalem."
Until the right season came, Zias invited two colleagues to the site, senior archaeologists whose names he refuses to mention in order not to embarrass them. "I brought them because I don't read Greek and I'm not an archaeologist," he says. "At 10 A.M. we went up to the top and looked, and again I heard the argument that if Nahman Avigad didn't see the inscription, it doesn't exist."
According to Radovan's photograph, the letters should have been in the corner of the structure, about nine meters from the ground. "I understood that if I didn't make a cast, I would never know if I was hallucinating or if there was something there," says Zias. "Judging by the photographs, I decided that there was some inscription there, for certain. It's not a subjective feeling, especially since even the photographer said it was photographed in the summer in a certain light. I have been retired since 1997 and I have a lot of time and quite a lot of patience, so I decided to wait for the right moment."
He missed a heartbeat
Zias now belongs to a circle of researchers called the Science and Archaeology Group, who have been working together for about a decade at the initiative of Prof. Chuck Greenblatt, a Harvard graduate and a doctor at Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem. At Hadassah's Kuvin Center for the Study of Infectious and Tropical Diseases, they are collaborating on the study of the DNA of the parchment used for the Dead Sea Scrolls found in the Qumran caves.
"There are about 1,000 scrolls at present," says Zias, "and one of the problems in the research and restoration is that about 99 percent of them are fragments or pieces of scrolls or parchment made from goat, sheep, cow or deer skin, and it's hard to know to which scroll each piece belongs. Using DNA, we identify the animal from which each fragment comes, and [look at] whether various pieces originate from the same animal.
In addition to studying the scrolls, Zias also worked on other findings from the Qumran caves. "We found lice from 9,000 years ago on combs discovered in the caves," he says. "This will make the religious people angry, because in their opinion the world was created about 5,000 years ago. In order to duplicate the blood of someone from that era, all you need is one cell from the stomach of the louse, and that has already been done."
The discovery of the inscription at Absalom's Tomb was the result of another type of work. "When the first summer arrived, in 2001, I saw something almost clearly," says Zias. "The inscription is located on the carved part above the door, and I stood on the nearby rock and photographed it, and for the first time I saw the inscription well. I understood that I needed scaffolding. I asked for permission from the Antiquities Authority only to copy the inscription. I received about NIS 20,000, grants from two institutions (the Society for the Development of Jerusalem and the Foundation for Biblical Archaeology), and the Palestinian laborers and I built scaffolding at a height of about nine meters above ground level. With the help of dental silicon we planned to make a cast-replica of the inscription. I enlisted the help of the lab director of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, Andre Weiner, because he is an excellent craftsman."
The two spread silicon on the inscription, waited until the material dried, and on it made a polyester mold. "My plan was that we would take it home and play around with the lighting in all directions," says Zias. "That's what we did, and we photographed and played around and invited experts - and nothing. It was very difficult to read it, but for the first time I heard people admit that there really was something there."
At this point, Zias turned to Prof. Father Emile Puech, a well known paleographer, who was a member of the international team of scholars studying the Qumran scrolls. Zias: "Father Puech is a very modest scholar, and one of the world's leading researchers in the field. He reads and writes excellent Hebrew, but doesn't speak it. I know him from the period when I was working at the Rockefeller Museum. I knew that he was like Avigad - didn't miss a heartbeat. He was among the first who said immediately, after one look, that the [purported] ossuary of James, Jesus' brother - which was hyped by Oded Golan, who was released from prison last week - was a forgery."
What did he say after you showed him the cast of the inscription from Absalom's Tomb?
"He looked at the cast and said, `Yes, there's something here. Call me in about a week.' I left him the cast in the monastery, and after a week I called and he said that he had about 50 letters figured out. I told him: It sounds like a miracle, I have to see it. Father Puech is an artist, and the moment he said that he had 50 letters figured out I knew that I could depend on him."
Puech decoded part of the inscription, which Zias says is about 1.2 meters long and 10 centimeters high. "This is the tomb of Zacharia, martyr, a very pious priest, father of John," it said. According to the New Testament, Zacharia the priest was the father of John the Baptist. Judging by the design and style of the letters, and the spacing between them, Puech determined that the inscription was written in the 4th century C.E., in other words, about 300 years after the structure was built, which testifies to the fact that the place was a Christian holy site at the time. In addition he discovered, in the upper lefthand corner, the Greek word "psycho," meaning soul, referring to the tomb. He also identified the name Simeon, but it is not known in what connection the name was written.
The reason why the inscription became eroded over the years, to the point where even Avigad didn't notice it, is related to the erroneous identification of the site with the tomb of Absalom, son of David. Avigad wrote, "It was a popular custom for a passerby to take a stone in his hand and throw it at the monument of the prodigal son, and sometimes they would add curses and spit." Zias says that not only Jews, but Christians and Muslims as well, used to come to the place and throw stones at the tomb. As proof, he displays a woodcut by a European artist from 1677: "Here one sees people in European dress throwing stones at the tomb of Absalom, who took his father's mistresses to the rooftops of Jerusalem in order to enjoy their company, and also decided that he was the king of Israel. In a photo from 1890, the site is seen surrounded by rocks thrown by pilgrims, and this is one of the reasons why the inscription became blurred and couldn't be seen."
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